This is the 2025-26 edition — an archived read. Read the 2026-27 report →

Kirby Dach

22 points in 57 games and a minus-29 — the worst rating on the club — in a third interrupted season.

Season	Team	GP	G	A	PTS	+/-	PIM	PP	SH	GW	S	S%	TOI

2019-20	CHI	64	8	15	23	-1	24	0	0	2	101	7.9	14:16
2020-21	CHI	18	2	8	10	-3	4	1	0	0	26	7.7	18:34
2021-22	CHI	70	9	17	26	-18	43	2	0	0	116	7.8	18:03
2022-23	MTL	58	14	24	38	-2	43	6	0	2	107	13.1	18:30
2023-24	MTL	2	0	2	2	+2	0	0	0	0	3	0.0	13:01
2024-25	MTL	57	10	12	22	-29	40	1	0	2	84	11.9	15:40
2025-26 so far	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—
Career	—	269	43	78	121	-51	154	10	0	6	437	9.8	16:44

This Season So Far

The 2025-26 season has not started. The empty row above is his, and both it and this paragraph fill in on their own from the morning after he first plays: what he has done, what it is worth against his own last season, and the run he is on when the two disagree.

Last Season

10 goals and 12 assists in 57 games for 22 points, minus-29 — the worst rating on the club — on 15:40 a night.

47.4 per cent at five-on-five, the 29th percentile, over 726 minutes. His on-ice goals were 22-41 against an expected 30.2-33.5, so the finishing ran 8 goals against him and the rest is real.

51 per cent of his shots came from inside 20 feet at a median of 18.

The Finesse Game

The tools are genuine — a 6-4 centre with hands that work in traffic and a passing game that has produced 38 points in a season. The location profile says he goes to the right places.

What is missing is everything in between. 84 shots in 57 games is a very low volume, 12 assists is thin, and the pace of decision at NHL speed has not improved in six seasons. He does not control a shift.

The Physical Game

6-4 and 221, and he uses it inconsistently. He can protect the puck and win a wall when he chooses to, and he does not do it every shift.

40 penalty minutes over 57 games. The body is the story: a torn knee ligament cost him a full season, a wrist cost most of another, and he has cleared 60 games twice in six years.

The Intangibles

The 3rd overall pick in 2019, two organisations, and a career that has been interrupted more than it has run.

At 24 the club has been extraordinarily patient and the patience is running out. There is a second-line centre in the frame and the evidence for it is now six years old.

What kind of player

The searchable half of the report. The first group is computed from the season's own data; the rest are read out of the prose above, and each one carries the sentence that produced it. A subject the report never raised is simply absent.

measuredcomputed here from the season's own data
ordinaryraised, and called ordinary
he lacks itraised, and he does not have it

Each computed tag also says how well its measure holds up from one season to the next, because a tag describes a season that has finished and a reader will assume it predicts the one coming. Some do and some do not, and the gap is wide: five-on-five workload repeats well, scoring late does not repeat at all.

sheltered· is started in the attacking end
63% of his end-zone starts in the attacking end, 93rd percentile among forwards
Season to season, this measure repeats well (0.66) · 47% keep it
wins-the-wallpresent and ordinary· the corners and below the goal line
“He can protect the puck and win a wall when he chooses to, and he does not do it every shift.”
playmakerhe lacks it· passes up the shot a scorer takes
“84 shots in 57 games is a very low volume, 12 assists is thin, and the pace of decision at NHL speed has not improved in six seasons.”

The numbers underneath

On the ice

Five-on-five, 2024-25 · 726 minutes

Expected goals: 47.4%; 30th pct
Shot attempts: 44.6%; 10th pct

Goals while he was on the ice: 22 for, 41 against. Expected: 30.2 and 33.5.

The eye and the numbers

Hindsight

Report

49th

Numbers

30th

The two rank him within 19 points of one another. It was written for a back edition, with the seasons that followed already known. Neither the agreement nor the gap says anything about the eye, and this report is excluded from the club-level comparison for the same reason.

Both bars are percentiles among the 637 skaters in this edition with a report and enough ice time. The report bar ranks the mean of the grades above — 72 on their own scale — against every other report's mean. The numbers bar ranks his share of expected goals. A gap is a disagreement about where he belongs, not two scales talking past each other.

Tracked

NHL Edge, 2024-25 · 57 games

Top speed: 22.7 mph; 72nd pct
Bursts over 20 mph: 1.93 a game
Distance: 2.63 miles a game
Hardest shot: 81.5 mph; 26th pct

A top speed is a season's best, and a man who takes more shifts gets more tries at one; the percentile is the feed's own, against every skater, and says less between a top-pair defenceman and a fourth-line wing than it does between two men in the same job. The counts are shown per game for the same reason.

Usual linemates

2024-25 · 726 minutes at five-on-five

Share of his five-on-five ice time spent alongside each player, measured from shift charts. Special teams are excluded: a power-play unit is not a line.

Why the numbers land there

Five-on-five, 2024-25

The club: MTL took 48.6% of the expected goals as a club. His own share is 47.4% — 1.2 below the club he did it on.
The role: Fourth line, 726 minutes at five-on-five — 30th percentile in ice time.

With and without

Teammate	Together	Him apart	Mate apart
Alex Newhook	49.0%	44.8%	48.5%
Mike Matheson	52.0%	44.8%	45.5%
Lane Hutson	52.4%	44.5%	52.2%

49.0% together, 44.8% for him apart and 48.5% for Newhook apart. He was worse away from Newhook, who was no better away from him — he needed that pairing more than Newhook did.

Expected-goal share while both were on the ice, and for each man in the minutes he played without the other. Apart is the pair subtracted from his own totals. It does not settle who was carrying whom — apart from each other, both were still playing with somebody — but it does say whether the share travelled when the pairing broke up.

Where he shoots from

goal on goal missed

121 unblocked shots in 2024-25, 11 of them goals. His median goal came from 15 feet. 51% of his shots came from inside twenty feet, 14% from beyond forty.